2016 - Making Oligarchy Painless

[A note from MeanMesa: This post title needs a little fixing -- a quick do over to get things started on the right foot. Of course MeanMesa doesn't expect the approaching oligarchy to be painless. To move toward a tiny bit more realism, the following title is, most likely, more appropriate:

"2016 - Making the Start of Our New Oligarchy Relatively Painless - 

At Least For the Time Being."

Now, having restored some semblance of literary relevance, we can proceed with another great post which meets Short Current Essays standards . Enjoy.]

 Remember, the Billionaires Are In Charge

Are they simply well 
paid pleasure puppets or 
network "news anchors,"
calling the tune?[image]

The "passionately embraced and insightful political discourse" currently choking the American media atmosphere amounts to what's left of the cheap cosmetics on a not particularly classy lady standing drunk on a pretty dark corner in a rainstorm.

Things are looking pretty dismal in the US political contest underway. Everything portrayed as "important" seems mysteriously banal. Surely, something must definitely be going on here, but the unavoidable conclusion is a suspicion that what we are seeing is quite removed from what is actually happening.

The gaseous culpability behind a mystery such as this -- at least in these modern times -- almost always rushes headlong to the feet of the billionaires. Armed with their "public opinion managing think tanks," these emboldened, in bred, trust fund trolls are now creeping from their gated country clubs out into the light as they pursue their ultimate obsession: a permanent, dynastic oligarchy.

A very faint "bright spot" in this careening descent into the "new state of things" is not buried any deeper than a very peculiar feature of these billionaires with their monetary wet dream of calling the shots after these last few details of replacing democracy have been "settled."

They're tremendous cowards.

They already own so much stuff that they instantly become embarrassingly nervous at the very first prospect of actually losing even the tiniest part of their dynastic fortunes. Their typical life experience has never included what the rest of us would consider "ups and downs." This constant fear might drive them to take chance and make mistakes, but their ten digit asset accounts actually give the little darlings plenty of leeway.

Standing this close to total victory, we can anticipate some pretty crazy behavior on their part. They are, typically, quite clumsy in the assertion of their power. They may have learned about patience and risk taking in their childhood "guillotine classes," but the "carousel's ring" is desperately shiny and almost within their reach at this moment.

With this little detail now handled so nicely, we can lurch right into the "meat of the issue." The final steps to accomplish this transformation is certain to be practically "hiccup-free" thanks to the fact that around 88% of "interested, informed, democracy loving" Americans have any no idea what an oligarchy is.

No idea at all.

No idea how life will change after we "complete the shift."

No idea how depressingly permanent this gut wrenching change 

will prove to be in a half a dozen decades. 

Think of it as a never ending tooth ache.

However, this is not a problem. The billionaires currently own around 88% of everything, so perhaps the numbers, in a sense, go together.

The Extremely Unusual 2016 Election

What's missing, and what's been added.

MeanMesa is constantly amazed as the "puppet show" rambles forward. In every corner the "political discourse" has become a predictable lament focused on the failing and foibles of one side or the other. The narrative has become tiresome and pointless. Regardless of the channel setting, the passionate accounts shared with the citizens continue to paint the comfortably reassuring meme of simply another, more or less normal, clash of mysteriously legitimate political campaigns.

MeanMesa is unable to discern anything recognizable as an actual "political campaign" mired in the media soup at this point. All the faces and words "networky" enough to reach New Mexico's high desert amount to endless flow of painfully tiresome, over scripted, castrated groans of dancing puppets -- dancing puppets with painfully obvious puppet strings which are far too visible to be ignored.

There's no reason to be overly "discrete" when revealing the personal specifics of this experience. MeanMesa will vote for Hillary Clinton. Bill's plan to scare the daylights out of this old voter has been highly effective. As is the case with most Americans who will also vote for Hillary Clinton, the most compelling reason, of course, is Donald Trump. That was Bill's plan to accomplish the election of his un-electable wife.

It seems to be working. The sold out networks -- also quite predictably -- are now reporting that the election margins are "closing." MeanMesa doubts this, but there isn't much reason to lose sleep over the prospect. Most likely it is simply another cheap tactic to "juice up" the contest so the campaigns, frightened by these inauthentic numbers, will spend even more on advertising.

Among the ranks of these contemporary, bumbling politicians, no one seems to know anything. Both campaigns are fiercely amateurish.

The industrial US media has infrequently insinuated that Hillary has actually proposed actual policy proposals about a few things here and there -- perhaps 5% of the minimum policy a normal, healthy campaign might have proposed. Of course there is little opportunity to particularly explore any of these "campaign ideas." Decades ago the Democrats completely lost their presence in the network media flow. The entire party -- and, certainly, including Hillary Clinton -- has become disturbingly invisible.

[Continuing with the theme of not being "overly discrete," MeanMesa is more than willing to share the media consumed here in the Galactic Head Quarters.

Stephanie Miller

Thom Hartmann

Rachel Maddow

Randi Rhodes

None of these sources are difficult or expensive to access. MeanMesa's enduring infatuation with Randi Rhodes has prompted the expenditure of $10 per month for her pod cast -- even though parts of it are available by subscribing on YouTube. Blog visitors are encouraged to seek out these sources. You will continually feel more and more "inner peace" the further you get from the toxic corporate media, but don't confuse "inner peace" with anything similar to hopeful reassurance.]

This is a crushingly gloomy vision.

Unsurprisingly, this election will be completed with essentially no expression of citizen opinion with respect to the future course of the country. It is a chilling case of "The Platitudes Win!" Thanks to the useless domestic US media, anything that isn't "a platitude" isn't reported. It is buried beneath thirty impenetrable layers of wet wool. The American political "audience" has become so codependent and so hopelessly stricken with ADHD that everything of interest must be reduced to a 140 word Tweet before it becomes considered to be digestible.

The New Paradigm Explains Everything!

The explanation is just as painfully distasteful as the question it explains.

The old paradigm rests on the equally old idea that elections in a modern democracy have something to do with the concerns and aspirations of the electorate. This time around such a presumption leads only to an incomprehensible, obsolete model of events with only the most tedious, flimsy "connections" to the reality of what is unfolding.

The billionaires' think tanks have been working diligently to deliver an electorate which is savagely alienated and disgusted. Citizens are alienated by the infuriating ineffectiveness of the current government. Few of what had previously been the "middle class" continue to expect that anything Washington might do will alter conditions of life in the country in any positive way. The carefully orchestrated effort to disgust voters has succeeded. There are dangerously few voters still retaining some tattered hope that the government might yet be saved.

This "dangerously few" number diminishes even more when the current candidates are added to the question. MeanMesa estimates that no more than 30% of the electorate expects any noticeable improvement in "American life" as an outcome from electing either one of them.

So. Is all this the result of a "groundswell" of irritation so intense that it has just finally "boiled to the surface?"

No, this is a "Swiss watch" of masterful, carefully planned, political manipulation -- a quite expensive one. Groundswells seldom have sponsors, designers or benefactors. This groundswell has all three.

The billionaires are making their move. The very last element of the old democracy which continued to block their efforts was the ballot box. However, after injecting a few hundred million dollars into state elections anywhere they could, the previously potent ballot box is, now, dangerously handicapped.

It is a two pronged effort. The voters had to be alienated and disgusted to a point where voter turn out was even lower than it has been traditionally. Voters who had "skin in the game" compelling enough to drive them to the polls were met with six hour wait times, the corpse of the old voting rights act after it had been thoroughly eviscerated by an obedient Supreme Court, crudely fashioned "identity" requirements, mass voter registration purges and every other possible, criminal disincentive.

There is no way to predict what voting statistics for the 2016 election will be. If the billionaires' think tanks have done their job, it will be dismal. Once the election has been completed, it will, most likely, be terrifying.

The Interesting Conclusion of Ibil ka Dum

Everything old is new again, except
there's nothing new under the sun.

Ibil ka Dum, 14th Century
Islamic Historian [image - YouTube]

Ibin ka Dum was a 14th Century Islamic historian. He documented an exquisitely interesting pattern of the origin, development and demise of an entire series of ancient cultures in the Middle East. [Note: It wasn't the "Middle East" until much, much later.] MeanMesa thinks this pattern that he observed paints a very modern picture. Although the stakes have evolved through the centuries [grown even larger], we are still in the cycle.

[Watch the YouTube video - 11 minutes. It explains everything. Then, come back to MeanMesa for the remainder of the post. Pre-Islamic history of the Middle East]

Now, we must seek the similarities between our current dilemma and the historic, repeating sequence of events our historian noticed.

The stages in Ibil ka Dum's "sequence" were both laconic and chillingly prescient.

Conquest

Consolidation

Expansion

Degeneration

Conquest

The list of civilizations observed by Ibil ka Dum to have progressed in this manner is impressive.

Mesopotamians

Sumerians

Akkadians [Sargon the Great]

Gutians

Ammorites [founded Babylon]

Babylonians [Hammurabi]

Assyrians

resurgent Sumerians and resurgent Babylonians

Kassites

Assyrians 

Chaldeans [hanging gardens of Babylon and Nebuchad'Nezzar] 

Persians and Medes [Zoroaster]

Macedonia [Alexander]

Seleucids [Alexander's generals]

Parthians

The period of all these changes is so long that only the highlights are mentioned here. While this ancient historian recounted this repetitive sequence of the events of ancient, pre-Islamic cultures in the Middle East, it offers a compelling resonance with the events of our most immediate, modern times. However, few souls beyond the inebriated bumblers in the odorous mob of mindless hill billies and bigots in the Trump minority consider the prospect of the United States being "conquered" by a rambunctious assault by nomadic tribesmen to be particularly likely.

Assyrian Soldier Beheading
 an Edamite ca: 650 BC
[image]

In each of the cases in Ibil ka Dum's list of repeating examples the power controlling an established civilization was over thrown by "wild" nomadic tribesmen from a near by region. Once the fighting ended, the cycle began. The initial "conquest" phase was pretty violent and destructive. With the nomads in charge a "consolidation" of all the remaining pieces was the next step.

The "new blood" of the conquerors, for a time, energized the "consolidated" citizenry of the "new" culture to undertake a territorial expansion. But over time the new, energetic blood of those who had now recently conquered, consolidated and expanded began to degenerate -- to become "soft from city living." By this point in the cycle the next near by nomads already had their eyes set on the next cycle of, you guessed it, conquest.

Still, MeanMesa offered "similarity" and "resonance" between this ancient tale and our modern events. So, without sinking too far into the details let's make an important distinction right away.

Let's replace the ancient idea of conquering an established culture, ripping apart everything there and taking over as the "new boss" with a modern version of the same process. In this case the degenerate "city dwellers" are replaced by the degenerate citizens in both various modern democracies and in various, more or less free, modern national economies. However, these modern day conquerors have no interest at all in the unilateral destruction of everything of value. Instead, their efforts are entirely focused on essentially maintaining the degenerative process while continuously extracting wealth from their new possession.

Rather than immediately becoming notably raucous, ancient city conquering, "party animals" celebrating their sudden, newly acquired wealth, these modern conquerors are much more inclined to adopt the character of the quiet and patient parasite. They intend to take possession, over time, of everything previously owned by those they conquered while allowing the "conquered democracies" and the "conquered economies" to continue to exist, appearing -- at least for a time until such an arrangement begins to divert too much of the conquered gold to the effort of maintaining such an artificial ruse -- unchanged in their "surface" appearance.

The Modern "Degenerates"

It's going to be much neater without the pillaging, plundering

 and all the messy wreckage of those old city walls.

By this time everyone already knows the nature of the next modern conqueror. The traditional Republicans, although somewhat confused by their nomination of such a shady candidate, are  still confident enough that the looting festival begun in the Reagan era will continue. The Democrats are still somewhat shell shocked that their candidate was so unpopular when she was nominated, but Democratic voters are quite aware of Ms. Clinton's close connections with oligarchic interests such as Goldman-Sachs, WalMart and others.

But, what should we have expected? We are in the final phase of our conversion to the oligarchic style of national government. It was inevitable that, at least by this point, the billionaires and corporatists would, very predictably, begin choosing Presidents comfortably sympathetic with their interests. To accomplish this it is completely understandable that the nominated candidates from both parties would both offer administrations committed to this "comfortable sympathy."

Nonetheless, we need not feel that the US voter is the sole victim in this global take over scheme. Yes, the US is a literal "treasure trove" of national wealth which offers the billionaires many remaining years of successful "hollowing out" before they've finished. But a quick review of oligarchic advances all across the world reveals that these happy go lucky, opportunistic billionaires are devouring every "democracy" and every otherwise relatively functional "national economy" which can boast of as much as two dimes to rub together.

Other countries may not offer the same stupendous wealth to serve as sustenance for these suddenly revealed oligarchic dynasties, but the other economies around the world, while perhaps offering less to loot, are significantly easier and cheaper to "conquer."

The Russian Federation is an autocratic oligarchy. The Peoples Republic of China, while not even pretending to be a democracy, is unquestionably an oligarchy. The prosperous nations in the EU -- meaning those which are not currently bankrupt -- qualify as "ripe picking" for the respective oligarchs. The oil soaked monarchs, theocrats and autocrats lurking about in the Middle East [Because this is significantly later than the world observed by Ibil ka Dum, we can call it that.] are either oligarchs or are having violent, religion flavored dreams of becoming oligarchs. The African and South American states, already enjoying a tradition of frequent government take overs, aren't faring much better.

It's probably important to understand that as the oligarchs succeed in taking control of an ever growing number of countries, the prospects for ever removing them decrease rapidly.

In terms of "degeneracy" -- as noted by Ibil ka Dum -- the citizens of the democracies have very successfully "filled the bill." With the now nearly unilateral failure of the public education experiment American voters have no idea about most of what was taught in high school civics classes half a century ago. Normally, when US voters would hear a Presidential candidate proclaiming that he intended to do what -- in those days -- everyone knew would have to be done by Congress, that entire campaign would have ground to a halt.

However, with more modern, "civics free" voters such a claim seems eerily acceptable. Adding to the "new understanding" is the fact that Congress never actually does anything anyway, making the gravity of such a campaign gaffe curiously gaseous. 

Don't forget to vote in November.

2016 - A Glimpse Into The Political Future

Facing Facts About the 2016 Election

No, these are NOT the "facts"

we have usually been hearing about

Sanders, Clinton and Trump.

While we're on the subject, we should also "clear up" any lingering confusion about the opinions to be found in "Current Affairs." The very best possible way to accomplish this is read the article quoted [in its entirety] below.

MeanMesa sometimes hears a bit of Norman Goldman's afternoon radio show. Norman has, of late, been utterly transfixed with his ambition to paint Clinton's Presidential chances as essentially a political inevitability. Goldman is an old, experienced trial lawyer, so he's quite familiar with the "ins and outs" of presenting his case. The radio show is full of the predictable back and forth between Norm an Sanders supporters, but this host's unrelenting admonition to "face the facts" of the "reality of the situation" have been wearing a little thin.

Goldman is NOT a single focus Hillary fan. His claim to credibility is almost entirely based on what he sincerely and realistically considers to be the electability of Sanders -- odds Goldman considers extremely unlikely.

MeanMesa doesn't have a three hour, nationally syndicated radio show, but this is not a reason to "hold back" when it comes to sizing up Sanders' chances at the Presidency. Goldman's assessment notwithstanding, MeanMesa considers the highly realistic prospects for Sanders to become the next President to be very good.

This is no time to begin quivering in hopeless despair.

Go Ahead. Treat Yourself to 5 Minutes of Stark Realism

It will take the average visitor to the blog about five minutes to read this article.

Current Affairs

A Magazine of Politics & Culture

[Visit the original article here CURRENT AFFAIRS]

Democrats need to seriously and pragmatically assess their strategy for defeating Trump. A Clinton run would be disastrous; Bernie Sanders is their only hope.

by NATHAN J. ROBINSON

With Donald Trump looking increasingly likely to actually be the Republican nominee for President, it’s long past time for the Democrats to start working on a pragmatic strategy to defeat him. Months of complacent, wishful insistences that Trump will disappear have proven false, and with a firm commanding lead in polls and several major primary victories, predictions are increasingly favoring Trump to win the nomination. If Democrats honestly believe, as they say they do, that Trump poses a serious threat to the well being of the country and the lives of minority citizens, that means doing everything possible to keep him out of office. To do that will require them to very quickly unite around a single goal, albeit a counter intuitive one: they must make absolutely sure that Bernie Sanders is the Democratic nominee for President.

The electability question should be at the center of the Democratic primary. After all, elections are about winning, and high-minded liberal principles mean nothing if one has no chance of actually triumphing in a general election. Hillary Clinton has been right to emphasize that the pragmatic achievement of goals should be the central concern of a presidential candidate, and that Bernie Sanders’s supporters often behave as if this is immaterial.

Instinctively, Hillary Clinton has long seemed by far the more electable of the two Democratic candidates. She is, after all, an experienced, pragmatic moderate, whereas Sanders is a raving, arm-flapping elderly Jewish socialist from Vermont. Clinton is simply closer to the American mainstream, thus she is more attractive to a broader swath of voters. Sanders campaigners have grown used to hearing the heavy-hearted lament “I like Bernie, I just don’t think he can win.” And in typical previous American elections, this would be perfectly accurate.

But this is far from a typical previous American election. And recently, everything about the electability calculus has changed, due to one simple fact: Donald Trump is likely to be the Republican nominee for President. Given this reality, every Democratic strategic question must operate not on the basis of abstract electability against a hypothetical candidate, but specific electability against the actual Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

Here, a Clinton match-up is highly likely to be an unmitigated electoral disaster, whereas a Sanders candidacy stands a far better chance. Every one of Clinton’s (considerable) weaknesses plays to every one of Trump’s strengths, whereas every one of Trump’s (few) weaknesses plays to every one of Sanders’s strengths. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, running Clinton against Trump is a disastrous, suicidal proposition.

Sanders supporters have lately been arguing that their candidate is more electable than people think, and they have some support from the available polling. In a number of hypotheticals, Sanders does better than Clinton at beating Trump, and his “unfavorable” ratings among voters are a good deal lower than Clinton’s. In response to this, however, Clinton supporters insist that polling at this stage means very little, and since Bernie is not well known and there has not been a national attack campaign directed at him from the right yet, his supporters do not account for the drop in support that will occur when voters realize he is on the fringes. Imagine, they say, how viciously the right will attack Sanders’s liberal record.

Clinton’s people are right to point out that these polls mean very little; after all, Sanders’s entire campaign success is a caution against placing too much weight on early polling. And they are especially right to emphasize that we should visualize how the campaign by conservatives will realistically play out, rather than attempting to divine the future from highly fallible polling numbers. But it’s precisely when we try to envision how the real dynamics of the campaign will transpire that we see just how disastrous a Clinton-Trump fight will be for Clinton.

Her supporters insist that she has already been “tried and tested” against all the attacks that can be thrown at her. But this is not the case; she has never been subjected to the full brunt of attacks that come in a general presidential election. Bernie Sanders has ignored most tabloid dirt, treating it as a sensationalist distraction from real issues (“Enough with the damned emails!”) But for Donald Trump, sensationalist distractions are the whole game. He will attempt to crucify her. And it is very, very likely that he will succeed.

Trump’s political dominance is highly dependent on his idiosyncratic, audacious method of campaigning. He deals almost entirely in amusing, outrageous, below-the-belt personal attacks, and is skilled at turning public discussions away from the issues and toward personalities (He/she’s a “loser,” “phony,” “nervous,” “hypocrite,” “incompetent.”) If Trump does have to speak about the issues, he makes himself sound foolish, because he doesn’t know very much. Thus he requires the media not to ask him difficult questions, and depends on his opponents’ having personal weaknesses and scandals that he can merrily, mercilessly exploit.

This campaigning style makes Hillary Clinton Donald Trump’s dream opponent. She gives him an endless amount to work with. The emails, Benghazi, Whitewater, Iraq, the Lewinsky scandal, Chinagate, Travelgate, the missing law firm records, Jeffrey Epstein, Kissinger, Marc Rich, Haiti, Clinton Foundation tax errors, Clinton Foundation conflicts of interest, “We were broke when we left the White House,” Goldman Sachs… There is enough material in Hillary Clinton’s background for Donald Trump to run with six times over.

The defense offered by Clinton supporters is that none of these issues actually amount to anything once you look at them carefully. But this is completely irrelevant; all that matters is the fodder they would provide for the Trump machine. Who is going to be looking carefully? In the time you spend trying to clear up the basic facts of Whitewater, Trump will have made five more allegations.

Even a skilled campaigner would have a very difficult time parrying such endless attacks by Trump. Even the best campaigner would find it impossible to draw attention back to actual substantive policy issues, and would spend their every moment on the defensive. But Hillary Clinton is neither the best campaigner nor even a skilled one. In fact, she is a dreadful campaigner. She may be a skilled policymaker, but on the campaign trail she makes constant missteps and never realizes things have gone wrong until it’s too late.

Everyone knows this. Even among Democratic party operatives, she’s acknowledged as “awkward and uninspiring on the stump,” carrying “Bill’s baggage with none of Bill’s warmth.” New York magazine described her “failing to demonstrate the most elementary political skills, much less those learned at Toastmasters or Dale Carnegie.” Last year the White House was panicking at her levels of electoral incompetence, her questionable decision making, and her inclination for taking sleazy shortcuts. More recently, noting Sanders’s catch-up in the polls, The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin said that she was a “rotten candidate” whose attacks on Sanders made no sense, and that “at some point, you cannot blame the national mood or a poor staff or a brilliant opponent for Hillary Clinton’s campaign woes.” Yet in a race against Trump, Hillary will be handicapped not only by her feeble campaigning skills, but the fact that she will have a sour national mood, a poor staff, and a brilliant opponent.

Every Democrat should take some time to fairly, dispassionately examine Clinton’s track record as a campaigner. Study how the ‘08 campaign was handled, and how this one has gone. Assess her strengths and weaknesses with as little bias or prejudice as possible. Then picture the race against Trump, and think about how it will unfold.

It’s easy to see that Trump has every single advantage. Because the Republican primary will be over, he can come at her from both right and left as he pleases. As the candidate who thundered against the Iraq War at the Republican debate, he can taunt Clinton over her support for it. He will paint her as a member of the corrupt political establishment, and will even offer proof: “Well, I know you can buy politicians, because I bought Senator Clinton. I gave her money, she came to my wedding.” He can make it appear that Hillary Clinton can be bought, that he can’t, and that he is in charge. It’s also hard to defend against, because it appears to be partly true. Any denial looks like a lie, thus making Hillary’s situation look even worse. And then, when she stumbles, he will mock her as incompetent.

Charges of misogyny against Trump won’t work. He is going to fill the press with the rape and harassment allegations against Bill Clinton and Hillary’s role in discrediting the victims (something that made even Lena Dunham deeply queasy.) He can always remind people that Hillary Clinton referred to Monica Lewinsky as a “narcissistic loony toon.” Furthermore, since Trump is not an anti-Planned Parenthood zealot (being the only one willing to stick up for women’s health in a room full of Republicans), it will be hard for Clinton to paint him as the usual anti-feminist right-winger.

Trump will capitalize on his reputation as a truth-teller, and be vicious about both Clinton’s sudden changes of position (e.g. the switch on gay marriage, plus the affected economic populism of her run against Sanders) and her perceived dishonesty. One can already imagine the monologue:

“She lies so much. Everything she says is a lie. I’ve never seen someone who lies so much in my life. Let me tell you three lies she’s told. She made up a story about how she was ducking sniper fire! There was no sniper fire. She made it up! How do you forget a thing like that? She said she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, the guy who climbed Mount Everest. He hadn’t even climbed it when she was born! Total lie! She lied about the emails, of course, as we all know, and is probably going to be indicted. You know she said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq! It was a lie! Thousands of American soldiers are dead because of her. Not only does she lie, her lies kill people. That’s four lies, I said I’d give you three. You can’t even count them. You want to go on PolitiFact, see how many lies she has? It takes you an hour to read them all! In fact, they ask her, she doesn’t even say she hasn’t lied. They asked her straight up, she says she usually tries to tell the truth! Ooooh, she tries! Come on! This is a person, every single word out of her mouth is a lie. Nobody trusts her. Check the polls, nobody trusts her. Yuge liar.”

Where does she even begin to respond to this? Some of it’s true, some of it isn’t, but the more she tries to defensively parse it (“There’s been no suggestion I’m going to be indicted! And I didn’t say I usually tried to tell the truth, I said I always tried and usually succeeded”) the deeper she sinks into the hole.

Trump will bob, weave, jab, and hook. He won’t let up. And because Clinton actually has lied, and actually did vote for the Iraq War, and actually is hyper-cosy with Wall Street, and actually does change her positions based on expediency, all she can do is issue further implausible denials, which will further embolden Trump. Nor does she have a single offensive weapon at her disposal, since every legitimate criticism of Trump’s background (inconsistent political positions, shady financial dealings, pattern of deception) is equally applicable to Clinton, and he knows how to make such things slide off him, whereas she does not.

The whole Clinton campaign has been unraveling from its inception. It fell apart completely in 2008, and has barely held together against the longest of long shot candidates. No matter how likely she may be to win the primary, things do not bode well for a general election, whomever the nominee may be. As H.A. Goodman put it in Salon:

Please name the last person to win the presidency alongside an ongoing FBI investigation, negative favorability ratings, questions about character linked to continual flip-flops, a dubious money trail of donors, and the genuine contempt of the rival political party.

The “contempt” bit of this is obviously silly; we all know levels of contempt have reached their world-historic high point in the Republican attitude toward Obama. But the rest is true: it’s incredibly hard to run somebody very few people like and expect to win. With the jocular, shrewd Donald Trump as an opponent, that holds true a million times over.

Nor are the demographics going to be as favorable to Clinton as she thinks. Trump’s populism will have huge resonance among the white working class in both red and blue states; he might even peel away her black support. And Trump has already proven false the prediction that he would alienate Evangelicals through his vulgarity and his self-deification. Democrats are insistently repeating their belief that a Trump nomination will mobilize liberals to head to the polls like never before, but with nobody particularly enthusiastic for Clinton’s candidacy, it’s not implausible that a large number of people will find both options so unappealing that they stay home.

A Clinton/Trump match should therefore not just worry Democrats. It should terrify them. They should be doing everything possible to avoid it. A Trump/Sanders contest, however, looks very different indeed.

Trump’s various unique methods of attack would instantly be made far less useful in a run against Sanders. All of the most personal charges (untrustworthiness, corruption, rank hypocrisy) are much more difficult to make stick. The rich history of dubious business dealings is nonexistent. None of the sleaze in which Trump traffics can be found clinging to Bernie. Trump’s stand up routine just has much less obvious personal material to work with. Sanders is a fairly transparent guy; he likes the social safety net, he doesn’t like oligarchy, he’s a workaholic who sometimes takes a break to play basketball, and that’s pretty much all there is to it. Contrast that with the above-noted list of juicy Clinton tidbits.

Trump can’t clown around nearly as much at a debate with Sanders, for the simple reason that Sanders is dead set on keeping every conversation about the plight of America’s poor under the present economic system. If Trump tells jokes and goofs off here, he looks as if he’s belittling poor people, not a magnificent idea for an Ivy League trust fund billionaire running against a working class public servant and veteran of the Civil Rights movement. Instead, Trump will be forced to do what Hillary Clinton has been forced to do during the primary, namely to make himself sound as much like Bernie Sanders as possible. For Trump, having to get serious and take the Trump Show off the air will be devastating to his unique charismatic appeal.

Against Trump, Bernie can play the same “experience” card that Hillary plays. After all, while Sanders may look like a policy amateur next to Clinton, next to Trump he looks positively statesmanlike. Sanders can point to his successful mayoralty and long history as Congress’s “Amendment King” as evidence of his administrative bona fides. And Sanders’s lack of foreign policy knowledge won’t hurt him when facing someone with even less. Sanders will be enough of an outsider for Trump’s populist anti-Washington appeal to be powerless, but enough of an insider to appear an experienced hand at governance.

Trump is an attention-craving parasite, and such creatures are powerful only when indulged and paid attention to. Clinton will be forced to pay attention to Trump because of his constant evocation of her scandals. She will attempt to go after him. She will, in other words, feed the troll. Sanders, by contrast, will almost certainly behave as if Trump isn’t even there. He is unlikely to rise to Trump’s bait, because Sanders doesn’t even care to listen to anything that’s not about saving social security or the disappearing middle class. He will almost certainly seem as if he barely knows who Trump is. Sanders’s commercials will be similar to those he has run in the primary, featuring uplifting images of America, aspirational sentiments about what we can be together, and moving testimonies from ordinary Americans. Putting such genuine dignity and good feeling against Trump’s race-baiting clownishness will be like finally pouring water on the Wicked Witch. Hillary Clinton cannot do this; with her, the campaign will inevitably descend into the gutter, and the unstoppable bloated Trump menace will continue to grow ever larger.

Sanders is thus an almost perfect secret weapon against Trump. He can pull off the only maneuver that is capable of neutralizing Trump: ignoring him and actually keeping the focus on the issues. Further, Sanders will have the advantage of an enthusiastic army of young volunteers, who will be strongly dedicated to the mission of stalling Trump’s quest for the presidency. The Sanders team is extremely technically skilled; everything from their television commercials to their rally organizing to their inspired teasing is pulled off well. The Sanders team is slick and adaptable, the Clinton team is ropey and fumbling.

There’s only one real way to attack Bernie Sanders, and we all know it: he’s a socialist fantasist out of touch with the Realities of Economics. But Trump in the worst possible position to make this criticism. Economists have savaged Trump’s own proposals as sheer lunacy, using every word deployed against Bernie and then some. And while from a D.C. policy veteran like Clinton, charges of a failure to understand how political decision making works may sound reasonable, Sanders is a successful legislator who has run a city; the host of The Apprentice may have a more difficult time portraying a long-serving congressman as being unfamiliar with how Washington works.

Of course, the American people are still jittery about socialism. But they’re less jittery than they used to be, and Bernie does a good job portraying socialism as being about little more than paid family leave and sick days (a debatable proposition, but one beside the point.) His policies are popular and appeal to the prevailing national sentiment. It’s a risk, certainly. But the Soviet Union bogeyman is long gone, and everyone gets called a socialist these days no matter what their politics. It’s possible that swing voters dislike socialism more than they dislike Hillary Clinton, but in a time of economic discontent one probably shouldn’t bet on it.

One thing that should be noted is that all of this analysis applies solely to a race against Trump; the situation changes drastically and unpredictably if Marco Rubio is the nominee or Michael Bloomberg enters the race. Yet the moment, it doesn’t look like Marco Rubio will be nominated, but that Donald Trump will be. And in that case, Clinton is toast.

Some in the media have rushed to declare Sanders’s campaign moribund in the wake of his recent loss in Nevada. This is absurd; after all, out of 50 states, only three have voted, one being a tie, one being a major Sanders win, and one being a small Clinton win. The media has dishonestly pointed to Hillary Clinton’s higher superdelegate count as evidence of her strong lead, despite knowing full well that superdelegates are highly unlikely to risk tearing the party apart by taking the nomination out of voters’ hands, and are thus mostly a formality. The press has also crafted a narrative about Sanders “slipping behind,” ignoring the fact that Sanders has been behind from the very start; not for a moment has he been in front.

But even if it was correct to say that Sanders was “starting to” lose (instead of progressively losing less and less), this should only motivate all Democrats to work harder to make sure he is nominated. One’s support for Sanders should increase in direct proportion to one’s fear of Trump. And if Trump is the nominee, Hillary Clinton should drop out of the race and throw her every ounce of energy into supporting Sanders. If this does not occur, the resulting consequences for Muslims and Mexican immigrants of a Trump presidency will be fully the responsibility of Clinton and the Democratic Party. To run a candidate who can’t win, or who is a very high-risk proposition, is to recklessly play with the lives of millions of people. So much depends on stopping Trump; a principled defeat will mean nothing to the deported, or to those being roughed up by Trump’s goon squads or executed with pigs’ blood-dipped bullets.

Donald Trump is one of the most formidable opponents in the history of American politics. He is sharp, shameless, and likable. If he is going to be the nominee, Democrats need to think very seriously about how to defeat him. If they don’t, he will be the President of the United States, which will have disastrous repercussions for religious and racial minorities and likely for everyone else, too. Democrats should consider carefully how a Trump/Clinton matchup would develop, and how a Trump/Sanders matchup would. For their sake, hopefully they will realize that the only way to prevent a Trump presidency is the nomination of Bernie Sanders.

Nathan J. Robinson is a Social Policy PhD student at Harvard University, as well as an attorney and children's book author. He is the editor of Current Affairs.

Will This Be the 2016 "October Surprise?"

There is an "October" Every Year

The "surprise" part gets added

 if there also happens to be an election underway.

MeanMesa is always watching -- even when an election cycle has just begun -- for hints of the corresponding "October Surprise" which might materialize months from now in the heat of the final days of the competing campaigns. This concern is more than a "passing moment of faux-drama" to full the lazy ennui of an otherwise delightful August afternoon in the Land of Enchantment.

This view could be justly regarded as geriatric cynicism if MeanMesa hadn't seen the same pattern so many times before: Iran hostages [1981], ENRON [2001], war in Georgia [2008], Gulf of Tonkin [1964], end of Vietnam War [1968], Iran-Contra [1992], bin Laden and Bush [2004] and others. In each case the consequences of the "October Surprise" -- whatever it happened to be in that particular election year -- maneuvered the election and delivered "electoral results" to its perpetrators.

[image]

Amazingly, just like the infamous scene in Peanuts when Lucy whips away Peanut's football at the last minute, American voters seem to very dependably fall for the stunt every time. The various "themes" of these "surprises" very often run along the lines of war somewhere in the world, but occasionally, these "themes" are more directed at economic catastrophes.

In the excellent DailyKOS article posted below, the latter may well be the case. When the "dollar amount" one of these episodes places on the electoral table is labelled in "$Trillions," we should pay attention.

Please have a look.

MeanMesa's compliments to DailyKOS.

The Commodity Market Wipeout

THU AUG 06, 2015

By gjohnsit [DailyKOS member]

[Visit the original article - DailyKOS]

There is a systemic and fundamental change going on in the global economy and it's time to pay attention.

With our economy and financial media engineered toward consumption, falling commodity prices generally don't register for most Americans. However, there are significant shocks from a collapsing commodity market that need to be recognized as non-negligible.

Eighteen of the 22 components in the Bloomberg Commodity Index have dropped at least 20 percent from recent highs, which means they are in a bear market.

 The last time this happened was October 2008.

Eighteen of the 22 components in the Bloomberg Commodity Index have dropped at least 20 percent from recent highs, which means they are in a bear market. The last time this happened was October 2008.

People might have forgotten that the commodity market collapse in the summer of 2008, just months before the Lehman collapse almost took out the global financial system.

Of course, commodities also collapsed during the Asian currency crisis of 1997-98, which didn't threaten the global financial system.

So are commodities a leading economic indicator or not? The correct answer is: 'sometimes' and 'it depends'.                                     

The center of this commodity collapse is the energy market.

Chevron's earnings were down a dramatic 90% from last year. Exxon's were down 51% y-o-y, the worst quarter since early 2009.

The collapse in energy shares alone adds up to $1.3 Trillion and is expected to create a $4.4 Trillion hole in energy company earnings over the next three years.

This has caused the energy sector to be the leading sector for layoffs in the entire economy.

As is typical, the biggest impact of the commodity crash is overseas in the emerging markets.

The hit is especially significant in the currencies and bonds of emerging market countries.

All told, developing-nation currencies have fallen to their lowest levels since 1999, and bonds denominated in those currencies have wiped out five years’ worth of gains.

What's more, the collapse is expected to continue.

Leading this meltdown is Brazil, who's economic indicators are at a 2009 low, and its scandal-plagued government is in crisis.

Brazil may be the worst off, but all of the BRICS countries except for India are having trouble. Russia is in a recession.

China's stock market bubble continues to struggle, despite the government spending anunprecedented $1 Trillion in an attempt to keep the bubble inflated. China's debt problemsare becoming more apparent.

South Africa's economy has also nearly stalled.

Combining the BRIC problems with Europe's economic stagnation we get the sharpest decline in global trade since 2009.

So what does it all mean? It's hard to say right now, but it is something worth keeping an eye on.

GOP 2016 Town Halls - Creative Writers Needed

MeanMesa Helps GOP Candidates Get Ready for Their 2016 Town Hall Meetings

We can't exchange goods that are broken and won't work. [image source]

When "Meeting the GOP's Voters"
 Becomes a Nightmare

The Democrats might encounter a little friction, 

but it won't be anything like this.

Amid the 120 million or so registered voters in the country there are hundreds -- perhaps even thousands -- who remain convinced that the Congressional GOP's inept floundering is somehow imbuing flesh and skin on the otherwise rather skeletal "take our country back" meme which has been so popular on the signs marching out of trailer parks. Of course, there really are a "few," pesky loose ends rattling around in the gears of the scheme, but the billionaire owners of the Republican Party are apparently convinced that all these minor "kerfuffles" can be successfully refurbished if the "redecorating budgets" are just large enough.

A desolate Libertarian Extravaganza! Fun for all!

From the viewpoint of cold, hard reality, can the GOP still count on voters who get all their news and information from the Party's propaganda network? Although this "electoral sleight of hand" has been fairly dependable for the last three election cycles, is there now a real possibility that the train wreck has finally become so outlandish that not even the GOP's base voters are still "true believers?"

It takes a LOT of FOX "news" to keep something this stinky looking like the real thing -- even at the stroke of midnight in the beer halls and the monster truck rallies.

Interestingly, we have seen a growing number of Republican politicians simply cancelling the traditional town hall meetings. Between the terrified, nearly bankrupt voices of the traditional GOP base and the out of control "barnyard ideologues" from the local Tea Party, what had always previously been a nice "microphone opportunity" to address voters has too often been reduced to a dangerous political gauntlet of yelling, sobbing and bad grammar.

Worse, those particular town hall meetings were conducted in a period where Congressional Republicans -- and even the Party's Presidential candidates -- were scuttling along in what appeared to be a more or less "stable" behavior pattern both while "on the job" in Washington and while stumping around for votes in their home districts.

The GOP's Chickens Come Home to Roost

And...those chickens have a few questions.

Well, Republicans, MeanMesa has always preferred to be considered a "helper." Based on this famously altruistic reputation, consider this to be one of those rare opportunities when we can "work together" for the country's "common good." This little high desert blog has taken the time to prepare a short "heads up" list of questions our Republican friends should probably expect to come up in those town hall meetings which will be unavoidably littering the campaign trails like rusty old, long forgotten WWII land mines.

Pitchforks and torches not allowed [image]

After the routine stump speech dealing with abortion, food stamps, rape, Kenyans, Muslims, welfare queens and a few other "FOX wall paper" items to get the crowd "juiced up," there will inevitably arrive that dreaded moment when "questions from the constituents" will be the next order of business.

The campaign staffers will fan out into the crowd trying to spot a few relatively composed "constituents with questions" who might appear somewhat rational, that is, "constituents with questions" who will not instantly explode in the town hall meeting with screaming, unintelligible "constituent questions" about UFO's, two headed snakes or godless Cold War Communism.

So, Republican campaigners, remember these guidelines to ensure that your town hall meeting is a happy one.

1. The campaign's video cameras will be running. Because those running these cameras will be your employees, you will not be able to blame any "embarrassing" moments on the "liberal press."

2. This town hall meeting will be full of your constituents -- probably from your own carefully gerrymandered district. You will not be able to blame "outside agitators" for turning your town hall meeting into a rowdy, loud mouthed, far too public campaign disaster.

3.  The local television stations -- even the ones owned by the same people who own you -- will be wanting to broadcast the video from this town hall meeting the next day on the six o'clock news.

4.  The voters in your meeting will be expecting you to explain the gaffes of the Republican leadership. In their minds control of both houses of the Congress means that your Party  -- and for them, this means you -- should have been able to accomplish fairly routine things instead of blundering every issue.

Let's play "Twenty Questions"

Relax, this is just a "practice" test.

Of course there is no possible way to even speculate what kind of questions the Republican "constituents" have been laboriously "cooking up" in the dimly lit back rooms of their aging house trailers over a lukewarm bottle of "Old Hack and Craw" 100 proof sippin' whiskey in a veritable Plebeian festival of "after dinner sittin' 'n spittin'." All your district GOP base voters will be trundling into the big town hall meeting with all sorts of different agendas from things they've heard about on their radios and an interesting collection of questions which have been, somewhere along the line, "the burning questions of the day."

They're expecting answers.

2016 GOP Town Hall Meeting. Everything's swell.

[The explanation of MeanMesa's use of the term "constituents" in parentheses is because, of course, Republican House and Senate politicians don't actually have "constituents" in the sense of being one of the traditional parties in what is called "representative democracy." In fact, these GOP "constituents" of theirs amount to nothing more than those information challenged, frightened, FOX-educated Americans who repeatedly vote them into office.

Instead of being concerned with any of these "representative democracy" style "constituents," Republican politicians now have replaced them with "special" constituents of a very different nature and with a very different role. These Republican "special constituents" can be identified by just a few unique traits not found in more "run of the mill," regular constituents. 1. They have hired K Street lobbyists and equipped them with check books. 2. They communicate their orders to their Republican Congressmen via very private telephone calls originating from unlisted telephone numbers. 3. They "invest" their "special constituency" status with unimaginably huge, secret donations to Republican campaigns.]

The following list of "Twenty Questions" might very well be accurately representative of the sorts of issues they may bring to the meeting. Don't say that you weren't warned.

1.   "Did the Republicans REALLY vote to shut down Homeland Security the same week that ISIS threatened terrorist attacks on the Mall of America? Explain what you were thinking."

2.    "Did the GOP Congress REALLY invite the Prime Minister of Israel to speak over the head of the President? Did the Republicans decide to go to war with Iran after the speech?"

3.   "Why did the Republicans keep saying that Keystone XL was going to create 42,000 permanent jobs when everyone else besides FOX is saying fewer than 150?"

4.    "Why did Speaker Boehner keep telling us that the President himself had said 22 times that he couldn't make the executive order that he made? Was what the President said that he COULDN'T do the same thing that he finally DID? This isn't very convincing."

5.    "Why are House Republicans still saying that the country can't afford Medicare and Part D when everyone else is saying that both of these are fully paid for years to come? Why did the House Republicans pass a law that Social Security couldn't move funds back and forth within its own accounts when Social Security had always done this before?"

6.    "Why are the Republicans going to cut funding to No Child Left Behind without replacing it with something else? Don't any of you have children in public school?"

7.   "Why do Congressional Republicans keep threatening to pass bills that the President has already said he'll VETO? Once or twice might be okay, but 56 times?"

8.    "The Republicans said that they were going to 'repeal and replace' ObamaCare, but all they've done is vote to repeal it -- over and over. They lost every time. When are you going to tell us about how you're going to replace it?"

9.    "The Republicans were talking about creating more jobs, but they haven't had a jobs bill or any other kind of plan. All you do is cut taxes for millionaires and then call that a jobs bill. Why won't Republicans pass a jobs bill that actually creates jobs? Do you think that we're really more interested in rape and abortion than jobs?"

10.    "The Republicans complain about the national debt, but they just added $387 Bn to the debt to make emergency tax cuts permanent. Those tax cuts were supposed to help us get over the Recession in 2008 and then sunset. Why are Republicans adding so much to the national debt?"

11.    "Why won't Republicans pass an infrastructure bill? We need the infrastructure, we need the jobs and interest rates are at an all time low."

12.   "Do Republicans in Congress really want to borrow another $5 Tn and fight another 10 year 'oil war' in Iran? Is the President's idea of a negotiated settlement with Iran really that bad?"

13.    "Why didn't the Republicans in Congress debate the war on ISIS -- even after it had been going on for six months? Isn't this part of the job of Congress?"

14.   "Why haven't Republicans written an immigration bill? The GOP still doesn't give a damn if Hispanic Americans never ever vote for them?"

15.  "Why did Republicans say that they weren't going to hold the government hostage with shut downs and then hold the government hostage by threatening to shut down Homeland Security? Haven't Republicans figured out that most of us don't like government shut downs?"

16.   "Why can't Republicans do anything to help college students survive their trillion dollar student loan debts? Why have the Republicans even blocked plans to regulate the interest on those loans? Don't the kids of Republicans also have to borrow money to go to college, too?"

17.    "Why are Republicans constantly trying to eliminate the banking regulations, and let Wall Street wreck the economy again? Is the GOP still trying to convince us that the Great 2008 Recession was really the fault of Democrats and Obama?"

18.    "Can you give us a list of the bills that the Republicans have actually passed and have been signed into law since they took over both houses of the Congress?"

19.  "Why do Congressional Republicans take so much time off to 'visit the constituents?' You've had one town hall meeting around here. Who have you been visiting?"

20.    "Why aren't Congressional Republicans doing everything they can think of to get us out of this economic slump? What are they doing?"

Although these questions have consistently used the collective phrase "Congressional Republicans" to address the town hall's host, the discussion in these town halls may very well migrate to the slightly more pointed term, "You."

Think of these likely questions as torpedoes aimed squarely at your election margins -- especially if they surface on tomorrow's local "news at six" along with a fumbled answer. Remember, the only thing standing between you and having to answer questions like these is FOX News.